From lead news article “Hotel group blocks release of room tax records”:
“It’s just another roadblock thrown up by the hotel group,” Sunday News Editor Marv Adams said. “We intend to keep pursuing what we see, and the Office of Open Records has ruled, to be public information…”
WATCHDOG: This strikes us as an echo from the sorry past, what the Lancaster newspapers were saying about the legitimate efforts of hoteliers to defend themselves from a room sales tax to fund an ill conceived convention center project and indirectly the Marriott Hotel, co-owned by a subsidiary of the Lancaster Newspapers, Inc..
No Marv, it isn’t “Just another roadblock”, it is democracy in action. You edit your fine newspaper and let’s allow the courts to decide on the legitimacy of the appeal. The Sunday News already has enough egg on its face from the past coverage of the development stage of the projrect.
While you are at it, how about an editorial decrying the extraordinarily one sided agreements favoring Penn Square Partners (High and Lancaster Newspapers, Inc.) with the Convention Center Authority and recommending that the matter be corrected, perhaps by High and Lancaster Newspapers, Inc. making up any Convention Center deficit?
If Marv wants to garner any support at all for his “witch-hunt” after hotel taxes; perhaps he should divulge just how much income the Marriott is stealing from the Convention Center with ‘bookings’, utility billage, kitchen income, etc.
Marv states that most hotels have other sources of imcome besides rooms (restaurants. exercise rooms, etc)….I’ll bet none compare to the one-sided lease agreement between the Marriott (aka PSP) and the Convention Center.
Marv, you want ‘full disclosure’? Then you provide ‘full disclosure’…… FIRST!!!!!!
And while you’re at it, Marv…let’s disclose what’s REALLY behind this initiative of yours…I’ll bet it has nothing to do with ‘public awareness’!!!!!!
From today’s Sunday News editorial page:
“Among other findings, the consultant noted that the convention center has created little ‘spillover’ traffic for the local hotel industry, that the primary beneficiary of the center has been the adjacent Marriott hotel, which is run by Penn Square Partners, made up of High Cos. and Lancaster Newspapers, publisher of the Sunday News.”
Wasn’t that the REAL purpose all along????
PSP were hopeful of creating a new income stream for their own use.
And, they were hopeful that the ‘face’ of downtown Lancaster and its’ immediate surroundings would return to the ‘face’ of the 50’s.
Anything else would be ‘icing on the cake’.